gestational diabetes

I’m pretty confused by this post. Are you doing a finger prick for your blood sugar? What are the units because that sounds like h1abc which isn’t the same as blood sugar. When I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes they took a fasting blood draw and then took several more blood draws after having special sugar water at one and two hours. Is this the test they did? Are the values you listed here a self test of some sort?

@Coral yes i do finger prick for blood sugar, i just did it 3 times in one go this evening as my first reading was the highest it’s ever been

@Coral i’m from UK might be why it comes across different, i’m told it has to be below 7.8 an hour after eating a meal:)

Thanks for the info! In my experience it is normal to have a bit of a range on the skin prick results. Sometimes one is way different than another even in a small time space. Occasionally there are outliers that might be wrong. The better way to perceive it is just to do it first thing in the morning before you eat and an hour after every meal and to look for trends rather than individual data points. The goal is to get to know your behaviors and to lower your blood sugar by trial and error. Everyone is a little different. I never had issues with my after meal blood glucose, only with my fasting values in the morning.

I found that not eating any carbs after 7 PM and not having any sugar or deserts for dinner really helped me.

@Coral thank you for your help💕

I’m doing the same as you and it’s so confusing as I can eat exactly the same thing and one day my reading is high then the next it’s not! I spoke to a nurse and she just said sometimes the same food can have different effects. Not helpful really! Like coral said I’ve been advised to eat before 7pm which I’ve been doing the last couple of days and it seems to be making a difference

Feel free to message me if you want to talk anymore about it

Oh yeah, and completely carb free snacks like cheese, nuts, and sugar free protein shakes were totally fine even in the middle of the night for cravings and didn’t raise my blood sugar.

Might be a random one but make sure you wash and dry your hands before you test and don’t use soap! X

@Gemma I was told about washing my hands first but have always used soap

Hi Lexi. Did the hospital give you a diet to follow & set you up appointments with a Diabetologist? I had to have 20grams of carbs for breakfast, 30-40 for lunch, 50-60 for dinner & 3 x snacks a day of between 10-15g of carbs. Food pairing is important too, so always eating carbs with protein or fat e.g apple & peanut butter. It’s important not to cut carbs out completely to help maintain blood sugar.

Check out gestationaldiabetes.co.uk - I found it really helpful when I was diagnosed (there’s also a Facebook group). I was always told not to test multiple times at once unless the reading was super unexpected as there’s a degree of inaccuracy with finger prick testing, and even then had to log all readings and add a note explaining why. Also as others have said wash your hands before resting but don’t use soap as it can interfere with the result. I used to wash thoroughly with soap after eating and then before testing with water. Are you logging on an app or in a little book? If on an app the hospital diabetes team will probably be monitoring and will see if you have too many high readings and reach out. I’d call your midwife again in the morning about seeing the diabetes team as it’s really poor that they’ve not referred you already. I had a group appt with a diabetes midwife when I collected my glucose monitor who explained more about it and talked us through dietary changes etc

The finger prick machine isn’t the most accurate and you can have different numbers. They just advise making sure you wash your hands before, just test once and go with that number.

Make sure you eat little and often, if you don’t eat for a long period of time your body releases sugar in to your bloodstream and your blood sugar spikes

Have you got the app where you record your sugar levels? You should be able to request a callback via that service or text your midwife with any questions. It’s different for everyone, some can diet control easily, some need medication to manage it, and it’s not your fault, it’s your placenta. My readings were consistently high and I ended up on metformin and insulin, with a healthy baby, and it went away. So don’t beat yourself up for high levels, choose lower carb options as others have said cheese was great for me, as well as full fat Greek yoghurt and berries, and protein so cocktail sausages etc. What you can tolerate will be different than what others can tolerate and that may change as your pregnancy progresses x